What’s one habit that has improved your life the most?
When I first started writing as a hobby many years ago, I set aside one morning each week. It was a discipline, and for a while it worked. Eventually, though, it was crowded out. I stopped writing for myself during the years when I was working on my doctorate and then in academia.
That is the irony. The years most closely associated with writing were also the years when I stopped writing in the sense that mattered to me. I was still writing, of course. Probably more than ever. But it was writing shaped by deadlines, assessment, professional expectations, and the need to produce something useful. It drew from the reservoir rather than replenishing it.
In recent years, I have recovered a different kind of writing. Each day I begin before the world wakes up. I start early and finish in time to take the dog for a walk at 6.30. It is a quiet, refreshing way to begin the day.
The habit is not simply writing. It is creating a space before responsibilities and deadlines take over. In that early hour, thoughts settle. Experiences begin to make sense. Life becomes a little clearer.
I still think of writing as a hobby rather than a serious endeavour. But perhaps that is part of its value. I am not trying to satisfy an examiner, build a career, or prove anything. Some writing produces a result. Other writing restores the writer.
The habit I have recovered is writing that belongs to me. Writing that forms rather than performs. Writing that clarifies rather than proves. Writing that fills me rather than depletes me.
A good life is often shaped less by dramatic decisions than by small practices repeated over time. For me, the most important of those practices has been learning to write again.
The Afterword 
Leave a comment